Extremely Long Absence

I just realized that it has almost been a year since I last updated my blog. I am deeply embarrassed about this and I blame it on Facebook. I can proudly say that Brody is doing a lot more than tongue trick since my last post. He is an extremely busy boy who keeps us running all the time. We can take him on 3 walks a day and he's still running around right before bed. He has a love for his books. He loves to read and chew on them. He got a board book for Christmas that the shape of the animal's ears stick out on the side and he has gone a long and made every animal earless on that side because he chewed them off. We have a stash of books he can't play with unless an adult is watching him because he'll rip them or chew up the pieces. I am thrilled that he loves books so much. I will just have to watch him closer to help him channel his excitement into less destructive avenues.
He has known how to whistle for at least the last year. He picked this talent up from a toy he got as a present for his first Christmas. He was given a kitchen toy set that had some measuring spoons on a ring like the toy plastic keys. Each of the measuring spoons has a hole in it. He learned to suck air through the hole and it made a whistling noise. After that he started learning to whistle without the spoons. I was thrilled and almost couldn't believe my ears the first time he whistled all by himself!
He's been going to nursery for the last month and he loves it so much. From the first time we've taken him, we've never had a problem with him not wanting to stay. This last Sunday we took him to nursery he made sure that he will never be forgotten by the nursery workers. I guess he has a favorite cupboard he likes to go hide in. Every time they get the toys out of it he goes right for it. Well, I went to pick him up for nursery and the workers told me they had to go get my mom for a diaper change (I'm the primary pianist and Shane teaches the Young Men). That wasn't anything out of the usual but then they told me that he hid in his usual cupboard to do his business. I mentioned that he does that a lot and that when he does that his nickname is "sneak-n-poop" a clever play on the word nincompoop. I just thought it was really funny that he hid in nursery to fill his diaper.
A week or so ago we were getting Brody ready for bed and we were saying our family prayer. I was holding Brody while saying the prayer. While I was praying he held out my hand and put his face right by it. I was trying not to pay attention since I was praying but I heard a spitting noise and discovered a wet spot on my hand. It was so hard trying to finish saying the prayer without laughing hysterically. I'm sure he picked that one up from watching Shane spit in the garbage cans occasionally.
My last funny story I have for this post is about getting ready for church. Shane was getting Brody ready for church and was trying to put on his red plaid shirt he usually wears to church. Well, Brody saw a recently washed shirt of his that had been hung out to dry the night before that says Little Monster on it and insisted that was what he wanted to wear. Shane humored him and put it on long enough to show me but then took it off to put his church shirt on. Brody refused to let him put it on. He really wanted to wear his monster shirt. Well, Brody won and he wore the monster shirt to church. Luckily we have a church sweater he wears so we hid his shirt under that. The only people that saw his shirt that day were the Bishop's wife and a family friend of ours. They got a huge kick out of that. He has a very strong and demanding personality that cannot be swayed once his decision has been made up. I hope he channels his stubbornness in the right directions when he's older.

Brody's New Trick

I thought this was so cute I had to post it. We've been laughing so much lately because of it. Hope you can enjoy it as much as we have.

Photos From My Portfolio

I just wanted to show off some of my work from my photography classes I've taken while I've been in college. These are a few of my favorites so far. I plan on publishing my own book with my work in it after I take the last class that I want to from SUU. Some from my very first class I took are on my other computer not currently set up to use so I'll have to post those later, but here are a few for starters. I like them all, but one of them I'm extremely excited about. I would love to hear feedback about which ones you like or don't like and why you like/don't like them.

The first three are from a body of work I did in my Digital Photography class. The work was titled "Master Of My Galaxy" I created all of these different scenes that could resemble somewhere in space. There are 11 pieces in this body of work but here are the best three images. The one in the middle a guy payed me some good money just for the right to have a huge one printed for himself. The reason he did it was because he was so curious about what it would look like huge. I also had someone offer to buy the green one on the bottom. The green one and the top ones were printed and displayed in a show they did for our class in the SUU library.



This one Was part of my glass assignment along with the one below. This one is on a white seamless background. We just had to successfully light the glass. It went along with the one below where we had to show we could apply the lighting glass to glass in a setting.



This image currently isn't named, but I do plan on giving it a name sometime. It is my favorite picture I've taken in a class so far. It was shot in a studio believe it or not. I got my sand from Sand Hollow and hauled it to class just for this picture. Other people have since asked me if they could use my sand since then. This was a really fun picture to shoot because it had a lot of class participation. We actually mixed water with soap and salt and splashed it on the sand and the bottle to give it that crusty look. In this image the object of the assignment was to successfully light glass. I got the best grade on this assignment out of all the assignments I've turned in. Down below is a picture of all it took to successfully pull this picture off.

Catch up... Once Again...

Sorry it's been so long since we've posted anything on our blog. I totally blame it on facebook. I am officially addicted to facebook and spend whatever free time I have doing whatever I can find on there. Since our last post a lot has happened. We started school... Shane with his accounting classes and me with my one photography class I'm taking. If anyone wants to check out what my studio lighting class has been doing you can check out our blog on my link list. It is a really fun class. We posted our in-class midterm shooting assignments were posted. Our teacher gave us random objects in a box and we had to successfully light the objects and shoot an image. We had to turn it in as is with no Photoshop editing on it. They are pretty cool. As far as exciting milestones go with Brody... He started crawling around 6 1/2 months old. He also stands up by himself using random objects to support himself and he's even learned how to climb the bottom step of our stairs. All this has happened so fast and I'm officially scared. It's exciting to think he's close to walking but I know I'll need my running shoes with him because he doesn't stop once he gets going. He's a lot of fun and I really don't mind chasing him around... we just have to make sure all the electronics by the TV are covered in pillows and various items so he doesn't get into them. Funny story is that whenever I put on Baby Einstein he's glued to the TV. I know I get at least 15 minutes of him sitting still when I put that movie on. Mainly for this post I just wanted to put on some fun pictures.















This last picture was taken right after Brody stopped sucking on Richard's ear. He was chowing down on it having a good old time. You can see the slobber on Brody's chin. I was laughing so hard I had tears running down my face it was so funny.

Christmas & A Birthday

Thanks to both of us recently joining facebook our poor little blog has been abandoned which is why we're writing a "catch up" post. I know what a sad time to neglect our blog. For Christmas we ended up spending Christmas Eve with Shane's family. We had a yummy dinner filled with lots of finger foods like cocktail shrimp, bean dip, sandwich wraps, cheese dip, potato and cheese puffs, battered and fried mushrooms and many other things. We joked around and looked at the Glenn Beck website where we watched the Ramahana kwanzmas video. Then they reinacted the Nativity Scene where we thought Brody would be the logical choice for Baby Jesus but instead Shane's 4 year old sister Malea insisted on changing her usual Mary role to Baby Jesus. It didn't matter to us though. After that we read the Three Trees and called it a night. We went home and spent some time with my parents, Amber & Devin, and Alisha & Dave. When they all decided to call it a night we played some rock band and then I fell asleep on the couch with Brody. Shane was up until 2:30 in the morning because he had taken some excedrin at his parents house and was in no way ready to fall asleep. We finally made it to bed with Brody happily sleeping between us until he got hungry and insisted he get his rice cereal at 8:00 in the morning. Once we were awake we decided to open presents before Brody took his usual 9:00 nap. Brody got clothes, a walker/wagon toy, books, a snowsuit, some other toys, a crib, and baby food. Shane got a movie, a belt with horses on it, a wallet, hot chocolate, and other cool stuff. I got a jewelry amoir, an 11/14 portrait of our family, some vanilla wafer sticks, and other fun stuff. Brody had fun playing with the paper on the presents and didn't want to let go of the kitchen toys Shane's family gave him. He barely made it to the end of opening gifts before he started to get ornery and was laid down for a nap. His nap didn't last long and he was in his walker playing with his new toys having the time of his life. We spent some time with my side of the family and had to wait for Brody to take a longest nap ever for the first time in his new crib. We actually had to wake him up after at least an hour. Thats the longest he's slept by himself after someone has put him down for a nap. We got him ready and went out to spend some time with Shane's side of the family and visit his grandparents. They had a party with pizza and other food. We visited and enjoyed one anothers company. The rest of the day and Friday are blurry to me. Basically we spent time with family. Saturday Shane's sister Kara did my hair and I love it. It is totally different but I've been waiting for a good day to take a picture and I also keep forgetting. It will give me a reason to make another post. We were going to go to a movie but they picked a time that was 15 minutes sooner than we could get there and by the time we got to the theater it was alreadh 30 minutes into the movie. We decided to go on a date since Brody was being babysat and ended up at Wingers instead. When we finished eating we ran home, grabbed some stuff, and went to Wal-Mart for a little bit. We then picked up Brody and went home. We had steak and shrimp for dinner and everything was yummy.

This is the Christmas calendar that Brody was only allowed to put the ornaments up on. If you look closely most of them are extremely crooked.

For New Years we went out to Shane's cousin's house and partied. They had food and we visited and played games. I was really nervous because there were nerf darts flying everywhere and I thought Brody was going to get shot in the face. Luckily he didn't and we got to ring in the new year by watching the ball drop. New Years Day we went to Yes Man with some friends and played games. I didn't have to babysit most the Christmas break so I spent time with Brody and my parents while Shane worked every day that wasn't Saturday, Sunday, or a holiday.
Yesterday Shane celebrated another great year of his life. We had dinner at his parents house where we had mud cake (crumpled up chocolate cake and chocolate pudding with whipped cream, m&m minis, and gummy worms) and ice cream. After that we had cake and ice cream at our house with one of Shane's good friends and his wife. I made him a funfetti bundt cake with white icing (snow) and teddy grahams on gum sticks as snowboards and sleds. There were also teddy grahams having a snow fight and some were even making snow angels. I got my inspiration from the beach cake where you put blue icing on it and have teddy grahams on life savers as tubes and a gum stick diving board into the hole at the center of the cake. It was a fun last hurrah for the winter break then sadly school started and we weren't ready for our break to be over. Shane discovered today that for all the books he needs for his classes are going to cost $750 and the stupid bookstore has only new books. I swear they have a conspiracy to get new books every semester. Most of Shane's books he's had to buy throughout his schooling career have been brand new books. After this semester we're going to try half.com. I'm only taking one class and it is a photography lighting class. It should be fun to take a class since I had last semester off. Well that pretty much sums up our lives up to this day.

More Food For Thought

Feeding Brody rice cereal worked for about 2 days. After that whenever we'd put him in his high chair and try to feed him he'd throw a huge fit and spit everything out. I tried putting food in his mouth and then putting his bottle in so he 'd suck it down, but it resulted in an even bigger fit and we ended up giving up. I guess he's not ready for rice cereal yet... we will have to wait a week or so and try him again. On another note here are some pictures of things he does enjoy putting in his mouth.

He is very limber and can put his foot in his mouth

He also enjoys shoving his fist so far into his mouth that he gags himself

Here he is sitting on our new granite counter top. Rules are he's the only one allowed to sit on it and that's only until he's 20lbs.

Last of all I had to show off my twin boys. They both happened to be wearing camo so I took a picture of them.

Food For Thought

Since it's close to Thanksgiving time I decided to do a post about food. Actually it's Brody's adventures in the food world. First I'd like to say that Brody rolled over for the first time on November 3rd. I worked with him earlier that day. All I had to do was hold his top leg on the floor in front of him and he'd do the rest. I was playing our Wii later that day and he was on the floor playing when I notice him roll over out of the corner of my eye. I was so excited I picked him up, cuddled him, and then ran around the house to tell everyone that was home. He was a little slow getting going but now he's a pro at rolling from his back to his stomach. We're still working on him rolling the other way but he hasn't got it yet. He's also started scooting a tiny bit when he's on his stomach. It's amazing to witness your child reach milestones. Speaking of milestones, Brody reached another one. Thursday he turned 16 weeks old so we decided to try him on rice cereal. After 2 days he's doing a little better at getting it in but he still tries to push it out with his tongue. He seems to like it because he cries like he wants food when we put him in his high chair while we eat dinner.

This one Brody was trying to see the TV while holding his own bottle. He's not very good at holding it yet but he does try at times. He's also turned into such a TV junkie that we've resorted to Baby Einstein so he's not just watching crap.

This one was his second day eating rice cereal. He still thrusts his tongue out but if you hold the tip of the spoon in his mouth for a little bit he'll swallow it. Soon he'll learn to eat it easier. The coloring is bad because not all the lights in our kitchen are hooked up to the power so we basically eat in the dark almost. I really didn't want to use the flash but resorted to it in the following pictures because the shutter speed was too slow to snap a clear picture.

This is him drinking his bottle with the rest of his milk in it. Its kind of brown because it has his vitamin D supplement in it.

After learning to eat and a good ole' bottle he was so tuckered out he couldn't even stay awake long enough to get burped. This one I didn't get focused very well. Oh well i'm still trying to learn the art of focusing pictures with an SLR.